FART OF DARKNESS

Aimless bevvying. Nights and days with no shape, substance or parameters.

This weather exacerbates the situation. Always muggy. Never breezey. Either torrential rain or blistering sunshine. The effects of last night’s drinking stops you rising at an hour of the day likely to be unbowed by the heat or undrowned by the rain. However, the overpowering need for the hair of that increasingly hirsute dog means you won’t wait around til the fresher balm of evening offers the chance of a recuperative stroll.

This damned jungle weather confounds the last chances of even a semblance of health or morsel of routine making an appearance in your close-season life.

You drink til closing time on a Friday and you head home, the knowledge of your empty Saturday and vacant Sunday gnaws at your last vestige of common sense. Should call it a night - can’t call it a night - because if there is no beginning to the day, how can there be an end to it? No Rangers - no reason … crack open a fresh one from the fridge - let’s have a chaser too … make it a large one …

And then you’re staring at the ceiling as the sun sifts through the blinds. Goram only knows how long you’ve been sprawled out on this sweat-soaked, alcohol-stained mattress. Semi-clothed, totally wrecked.

The heat, the hangover, the haze of confusion merges the present into both the past and the future. You start to hear what you need most and what you remember fondest, all driven by the distorted immediate you daren’t inhabit: A passing truck, on the road outside your shaded bedroom window - the roar of the engine impersonates the roar of the Copland; A youngster shouting on mum sounds like an overlapping Alan Hutton screaming for a ball down the channel from Ferguson; The clunk of bin-lid on bin could almost be a smartcard-operated turnstyle, clicking you onto the foot of the Govan Rear stairs…

Clunk - clunk - clunk …

The sweetness of these delusions gives you the strength to escape the grapling blankets, steady the buckling legs, stumble forward and peak through those grimy blinds. Clunk. The sunshine hurts your eyes. Clunk. The pub seeps slowly from the pupils and then, as your sight adjusts, your heart sinks. Clunk. You see the REAL scene outside and you remember …

Saltcoats.

Shit.

I’m still only in Saltcoats.

(fuck it - suck down the last of that Jack Daniels and Coke in the glass by yer bed)

Every time I think I’m gonnae wake up back in mid-season.

The summers during the early eighties were worse (flick a wasp off my Evening Times Little Red Book) - I’d wake up and there’d be nothing (drunkenly pick up my picture of Goughie lifting the Ninth in a Row, at Tannadice). I hardly said a word to my mum until I said yes to the new pin-striped jersey due out for the 82/83 season.

When I was at Ibrox I wanted to be home - when I was home, all I could think about was getting back into the Jungle Jims.

I’m here a month now, waiting for a real game … getting softer.

Every minute we don’t sign players we get weaker, and every minute Celtic sell a hooped shirt, and get stronger.

Each time I look back, last season gets a little shiter.

… Anyway! Whatever. Time for more drink - this time I don’t even leave the room - I just carry on necking the bottle of JD I cracked open in the early hours for a night cap and drink myself into a raging frenzy of colliding bravado and worry: I stagger about the room, in my Rangers pyjama bottoms, glass in hand, pretending to tackle Neil Lennon at waist height, imagining I’m head-butting Thomas Gravesen then, in the swig of a shot, I’m squaring an imaginary sitter to Kris Boyd and joining him in an addled celebration in front of the Jock Stein stand at parkhead - well, after my five-minute hat-trick the least I could do was tee Boydey up for his first against them at The Piggerry! - and the Jack Daniels tells me this is quite a way to wrap up the 2007/08 SPL title …

And then I’m looking, swayingly, at the full-length mirror in my room and, on mistaking my reflection for a very fat Barry Ferguson I try to strip the mirror of its armband and, when it wont let me have the armband I berate it at the top of my demented voice for being such a disgrace to the duties encumbant on a Rangers captain. But still he wont give it back and, after he refuses my offer of first punch in a locked dressing room, I chuck my bottle of Jack Daniels at Barry … and he crashes into a thousand pieces on the floor and I wonder if it’ll be another five years before we win a trophy as I crash into a million pieces beside the glass … and I have no drink … and I cry into my glass … and bleed onto my carpet…

No centre, no focus, no games - no COMPETITIVE games for a month behind and a month in front and all the memories of all the anger of 2006/2007 have clashed head-on with all the unsubstantiated hopes for 2007/2008. Yet - and yet - even in the middle of this psychological hinterland, I still know that all I need is to see The Gers in the flesh, and I’ll be okay …

.. but it’s such a long time since and such a long time til …

A friendly with Hanover, IN Lower Saxony, ON MY BIRTHDAY!!! - it’s almost as if Rangers have arranged it especially for me, to try and help me through this nightmare of non-involvement. (By the way, as a good Bear/Bearette, you’ll no doubt know the House of Hannover became the house of Saxe-Coburg Gotha after Queen Vickie’s reign but d’ye know that when George V decided, during the First World War, that the surname needed changing to something slightly less “German” , he changed the Royal Family’s name to “house of” Windsor ALSO on MY Birthday - 17th July 1917!! - yes, I AM that old and I really am THAT important!!) Hanover on 17th July - Christ, when yer Rangers and yer playing in the home town of the Queen’s ancestors ye might as well switch it to five days earlier - go the whole Proddy Royalist hogg. I mean who’d ever have thought we could find a fixture MORE BRITISH PROTESTANT than playing Linfield at Windsor Park??!! … wonder what we’re doing on 31st October 2017? - Playing wa’ey against the Wittenberg Church doors?! It might be “Hannover 96″ - but we want Luther’s “Wittenberg 95″ for that game! …

… ye’ve taken that too far, Eck … ye’ve taken it all too far …

Ach, this close season is like all the other close seasons which follw shite campaigns: Ye spent all of the shite campaign wanting it to be done and over with - finished - ye thought all ye wanted was a break. But then, when it’s over, you want straight back into it!. It turns out all ye wanted was a change - I never want a break from The Gers - and when we’ve had a bad time of it, I need to see us geting stuck back in as soon as possible. My head and heart knows we’ll be okay - experience tells me not to worry about a single Celtic signing and not to get excited about a single Rangers singing … rumour. Nothing’s written in stone til after midnight on Transfer Window-Shutting Day (it’s the new whitsun!). And, even then, no-one knows how great/pish any one signing will be. We’ve been favourites to win the SPL at the start of each of the last two seasons - and we’ve been nowhere near it on either occassion. Quite fucking frankly, it’ll be nice to be underdogs for a change. I would just feel easier if I could watch them playing - see those Red and Black socks in action again …

But then …

Martin Bain and that guy fae the ticket office came and chapped on the door of my Saltcoats holiday shack. The door was open. The smell hit them first, the sight was even more rancid. But they asked me if I was Fat Eck and I beckoned them in, saying they could revoke my season ticket if they wanted - I admitted I was guilty: I really would have invaded the pitch if Boruc had stuck that flag in our grass - but they spoke about a “mission”, about a signing or two, about a new season. That was all I wanted to hear - it let me relax - I knew the next campaign was already underway. But they wouldn’t let me slump back into sleeping off my hangover.

“I think we’ve got a dead one here” was all I heard before I was chucked into a cold shower. Then I was whisked off to meet Sir David, Walter and a sleekit looking players’ agent - they played me a recording of Gordon Strachan talking total shite and I realised that, although next season was going to be hard, I would have my part to play in winning the very winnable battle to put Rangers top of the pile once again.

We all have our part to play, troops.

Stay sober.

About this entry

You’re currently reading “FART OF DARKNESS,” an entry on FatEck.co.uk

Published:
06.18.07 / 11pm
Category:
News